Sithel

sci-universe:

The annual Perseid meteor shower is my favourite and the most famous stargazing event during the summer. It puts on a great show this week as you can see 60 or more “shooting stars” per hour! The meteor shower lasts until late August but as Phil Plait said the best time to watch is Wednesday night after local midnight - that’s when your part of the Earth is facing into the oncoming meteoroids and you see more.

Here are some general tips which make stargazing better:

• Give your eyes 20 minutes to adjust to the dark. Any exposure to bright lights will instantly ruin your eye’s acclimatization to the dark.

• If possible go outside the city, or search for good local stargazing places

• For the best chances of spotting a shooting star, scan the whole sky repeatedly

• Be prepared to spend a few hours sitting outside. Meteor showers can be seen as soon as it gets dark, but better viewing begins about 11 pm

• Here’s NASA’s visibility map from last year:

The meteors are bits of rocky debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle as it orbits the Sun. When Earth goes through the comet’s path, some of the bits of comet dust slam into the atmosphere.
Have further questions? You’ll probably get an answer here.

“The machines can’t read it, so we have to. It does get easier after you’ve been doing it for a while. You start to recognize certain things.” -Natalie Jenkins, postal worker who helps decipher letters at the Remote Encoding Center

The U.S.P.S. has long been a pioneer in the field of optimal character recognition AKA OCR. They've got vast rooms of machinery that scan your mail and route it to the appropriate other rooms of machinery until it gets sorted (probably by more machines) and then your postal carrier gets their bundle to bring out to you. Those machines are really good at what they do- 98% good, in fact, according to the New York Times. 

When the machine fails, that's where the Remote Encoding Center gets to work. There used to be more of these centers, but as the technology has improved, the U.S.P.S. has closed all but one. Located in Salt Lake City, the 700 workers spend an average of three seconds looking at all the illegible and faded or otherwise confusing addresses. They process 5 million pieces of mail DAILY. 

And people balk at the price of stamps. All that work and all those jobs working for your mail for 49 cents. It is a wonder, I tell you.

P.S. The image is not one that needed any help being delivered, but all of the photos I found of the REC were boooooooring or not under CC license.

coolthingoftheday:

Soothing pictures. 

Soooo satisfying

Sketches of my characters Emily and Hawkins

eevee-morgan:

angiellehcim:

when I came up for a breath…
God, it was beautiful.

this is mesmerising.

I’ve just pushed out an early alpha version of Smarter Playlists, my summer spare-time project. Smarter Playlists is a playlist builder that lets you create new interesting playlists by combining sources of tracks (like albums, artists, other playlists) and filtering, sorting and re-arranging these tracks into a playlist. For example. Here’s a simple playlist that combines two Spotify playlists: Morning Commute and Your favorite Coffee house into a single new playlist:

Here’s a more complex example that starts with a Gothic Metal playlist and mixes in the top tracks from the band Ravenscry into the first songs in the playlist.

This is still very much an alpha version, so there are likely to be a bug or two – but give it a go if you are so inclined.

Check it out at Smarter Playlists

Entertainment Weekly just released some photos of Charlie Hunnam as King Arthur in Guy Ritchie’s Knights of the Round Table: King Arthur. Just look at that gentle, longing stare from the medieval king! He has scars, but he’s got a soft side.

Hunnam also describes his version of King Arthur like a dating site would?

He’s a little bit rough around the edges, but he’s basically a survivor. He’s a hustler. He’s a street kid. There’s definitely a harder edge to him than people would imagine. It’s sort of classic Guy Ritchie stuff.

“The camera went off by itself–I am not a model”

To be honest, it’s a refreshing change to see a male character that’s not typically known as a sex symbol (that’s more of a Lancelot thing, right?) beckoning us to come-hither, as opposed to an unnecessarily-sexified female character. I’m….going to go buy this issue now. Thoughts?

(via Pajiba, images via Entertainment Weekly)

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Forget painting the walls…changing up any room in your home can be as easy as popping in a new light bulb. The ilumi Bluetooth Smartbulb, to be specific. Get it now at The Mary Sue Deals for $49, a savings of 45%.

Here’s how to use the ilumi to transform your space:

• Choose from millions of colors to light up the room, all programmed from your smartphone.
• Program your light to turn on and off as you enter and leave the room.
• Sync the ilumi to pulse with the beat of a playlist.
• Ditch your alarm clock and wake up more naturally with ilumi’s sunrise effect.

Did we mention that ilumi bulbs are also energy efficient? You’ll get 20 years out of each one, and they have five times the energy efficiency of a regular light bulb. Head over to The Mary Sue Deals to get ilumi for $49. Add it to your cart!

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glamoramamama75:

There will never be another moment in cinematic history that is lovelier than this.

Blissful moments…

fateash:

《The Cephalopoda》 part 2 drafted and illustrated by  Carl Chun(1852-1914)

darth-sebious:

mirkokosmos:

The Fastest Ship in the Universe

Geekbumps

We’re unabashed Twin Peaks fans ’round here. That’s for certain. So you can bet we’re chomping at the bit for some details about this Twin Peaks-theme pop-up restaurant opening in London for the next few months.

Named “The Owls Are Not What They Seem” (yeah, I know!), the experience is said to be more than just nomming down on donuts, pie, and coffee. It’s an “immersive dining experience,” which means that there’s most likely going to be some characters walking around interacting with patrons.

You can snag dining reservations, which includes a cocktail and a three course meal at the Double R. Or, if you’re looking to just get straight down to business, you can grab a bar ticket which gets you into the RoadHouse for “bespoke Lynchian cocktails,” and “potential to turn into a full on Red Room experience.” You know, in case you want some horrifying dread with your Laura Palmer.

… on second thought, I’ll just have some whiskey. Neat. From a sealed bottle. Yeah, I’m watching you.

(via Nerdist)

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knightofleo:

emilie nicolas | pstereo

biomorphosis:

The maned wolf is the largest canine species in South America and closely resembles a red fox on stilts because of its long legs. It is neither a wolf, fox, coyote, or dog  but rather a member of its own Chrysocyon genus, making it a truly unique animal. They possess a mane that runs from the back of the head to the shoulders which can be erected to intimidate other animals when displaying aggression or when they feel threatened. 

Unlike other wolves that live in packs, maned wolves do not form or hunt in packs but prefer to live alone.  Maned wolf is considered as the last surviving species of the Pleistocene Extinction, which wiped out all other large canids from the continent.

Cover for my last comicbook “clues” coming out in september!

cptdave:

watching any action movie after seeing Fury Road

z-arb:

By   Cameron Sandercock on Flickr

fuckyeahvintage-retro:

1974 ‘’Mary-Lou’’ Caravan

(via Love Vintage Caravans)

laughingsquid:

High Carbon Steel Utility Knives Crafted To Look Like Five Different Types of Whales